The Fight for Kidsboro

by Marshal Younger

  They sat there staring at me, knowing exactly what was going through my head. Ashley’s future in Kidsboro, and possibly my future as a living, walking human being, depended on my vote. Jill and Alice would vote for Ashley because she always invited them to her birthday parties. Ashley lived on Trickle Lake and her birthday party always included boating, swimming, and water skiing. It was the best party of the year. So Jill and Alice would vote for her simply because they wanted that invitation in their mailboxes.

  Nelson would end up voting for Ashley. Getting Valerie mad at me was one thing. But actually living with her every day in adjoining rooms like he did, where she had easy 24-hour access to his neck, would be a nightmare.

  I knew Scott would vote against Ashley. Scott had never liked Ashley, and he would do anything to keep her out, even if it meant putting his life in danger.

  So the vote would be three to one. If I voted yes, the vote would be four to one, and Ashley would have the required 80 percent.

  We went around the room. “Yes,” Alice said.

  “Yes,” Jill said.

  “No,” Scott said.

  “Yes,” Nelson said.

  No surprises. They all sat up in their chairs and gazed at me. I could almost feel Valerie’s hands around my neck, ready to squeeze. I took a long breath, still not quite sure what I was going to say. I closed my eyes tightly. Sweat began to drip down my face. Not a sound came from the other four members of the council as I opened my eyes and let the word slide off my tongue.

  “No.”

  2

  DANGEROUS CHOICES

  I REMAINED SEATED AS EVERYONE filed out of the meeting hall past me. Nelson looked at me the way a priest would look at a man who was about to be executed. He adjusted his glasses and put his hand on my shoulder as if to say, “Bless you, my son,” and that he’d pray for my soul. Scott, being my best friend, probably thought he should be supportive, and so he said, “The town thanks you.” Then he went to his clubhouse, obviously forgetting that he was supposed to go walk the dog. Jill smiled as if she just might have a homicide to report in the next edition of the newspaper. Alice offered her protection. I think she was joking, but I’m not sure.

  As I left the meeting hall, I expected Valerie to jump around the corner immediately, but she didn’t. This frightened me. I figured I would be okay as long as I could look her in the eye. But if she lurked in the shadows, I’d probably go nuts. Maybe she knew this. Maybe her plan was to drive me crazy by not acting. It would certainly cause everyone in town to wonder whether they should have a mayor who was insane. Then, when she had everyone thinking I should be locked up, she would take over. That was probably her plan … and it was working rather well so far.

  My stomach was in knots, so I walked to Whit’s End to get something to drink.

  “Hello, Ryan,” Mr. Whittaker said from behind the counter.

  “Hi, Mr. Whittaker.”

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “You look a little pale.”

  “My stomach hurts.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No,” I said, “but I may be dying.”

  “What?”

  He made me sit down and spill the whole story of Valerie and Ashley and the city council vote. He smiled and said, “You made the right choice, even though it could make things difficult for you. I wish all of our political leaders had your standard of ethics. So, who are you going to nominate next?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Since Ashley didn’t get in, I had to come up with a new candidate for citizenship. I had a few ideas off the top of my head.

  “I’ve been thinking about Larry Mankowicz.” He was a track star at Odyssey Middle School—a very popular guy who would put Kidsboro on the map just by being there. “Also, Mary Burgess,” I said. Mary was the second prettiest girl in our school, in my opinion, next to Valerie.

  “Oh … okay,” Mr. Whittaker said, bowing his head and suddenly becoming very interested in cleaning a glass. He knew both of these people, and though he didn’t say it, I could tell he disapproved of my choices. I saw him glance over to one of the booths, and I followed his look. Sitting in the corner by himself was Roberto Santana. I barely knew him, though I knew he had moved to Odyssey from the Dominican Republic about two years earlier. He didn’t appear to have many friends. I knew what Mr. Whittaker wanted me to do, though he refused to say it. I felt a little ashamed. I was picking people based on what they could do for Kidsboro, not for what Kidsboro could do for them.

  “I catch your drift,” I told Mr. Whittaker.

  “What?” he said innocently.

  I smiled and left. I had to get council approval.

  “There he is,” I said to Scott as we ate lunch in the school cafeteria. I pointed to Roberto, sitting alone at the very last table. He was eating at lightning speed so he could run to the library, where he could be by himself and not have everybody staring at the kid who was sitting alone. He did that every day.

  “Roberto Santana?” Scott asked. “Are you sure?”

  “He’s perfect,” I said.

  Scott dipped a French fry into his ketchup. “Excuse me for bringing this up, but you do know his dad’s in jail, right?”

  “That’s just a rumor.” I hated the way kids believed anything they heard. The latest gossip was that Roberto’s dad was in jail. No one knew exactly why, but everyone had a guess. Roberto denied all of it. I believed him, though I had no evidence on my side either.

  “Maybe it’s a rumor, maybe it isn’t,” Scott said.

  “Yeah, but even if it is true, which I doubt, why should that matter?”

  Scott shrugged, his ketchup-soaked French fry dangling limply from his hand. “We don’t want any trouble in our town, do we?”

  “What Roberto does and what his father may or may not have done are two different things. ”

  “So maybe we should ask him,” Scott said.

  “Ask him if his father’s in jail?”

  “Yeah. The city council’s gonna want to know.”

  “Why should it matter?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. You don’t think it matters?”

  “No.”

  Family matters were private. I knew this especially, because I wanted my own family matters to be private. My mother and I had moved from California to Odyssey when I was eight. No one knew anything about my life before I came to Odyssey, and I was determined to keep it that way. It was something I never talked about, even with Scott. Roberto had a right to keep his mouth shut too.

  “Pardon me for breathing,” Scott said, “but does he even wanna be in Kidsboro?”

  “I told him about it,” I said, “and he seemed to think It was a cool idea.”

  The next day I presented Roberto’s name to the city council. I was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response.

  “Do you really know him?” Jill asked.

  “No. But I know he’s smart. He got the best grade, in my history class.”

  “How is knowing history going to help us?” Scott asked, still not convinced of Roberto’s worth.

  “I don’t think he knows how to speak English,” Alice said.

  “Yes he does.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out how he’s going to help Kidsboro,” Jill said.

  “We didn’t ask that question about any other candidate. I mean … we’ve got people in this town who have almost no positive qualities at all except that they’re somebody’s friends. Now why does Roberto have to live up to higher expectations?”

  They all exchanged looks.

  Nelson was the only one brave enough to speak up. “I know this may not be a reason to keep him out, but you do know about his dad—”

  “Yes!” I answered angrily. “I know what people say about his dad. What does that have to do with him?”

  Nelson adjusted his glasses. “Some studies indicate that criminal behavior is genetic.”

  “Have any of you ever see
n Roberto steal anything?” I asked.

  They shook their heads.

  “Have any of you ever seen him destroying property? Getting into a fight?” More heads shaking. “Then we have no evidence that he is anything but a good student. That we have evidence for.”

  “I agree,” Jill said. “We can’t keep him out because of his father. But I think he should have a probation period. A couple of weeks to show us what he’s got—since nobody really even knows him.”

  Everybody around me nodded. I was against this, but I was confident that Roberto would soon show everyone that he could be an asset to the community. So I agreed. Roberto would become a citizen of Kidsboro, but he would be watched very closely.

  I gave Roberto the news (though I didn’t mention the probation), and he seemed happy about it. I had a feeling he was just thrilled to be a part of something.

  Scott and I showed Roberto around the town, including his new clubhouse. Usually, new citizens were given a plot of land, and then they were responsible for buying the wood to build their own houses. But our town builder and handyman, Nick, had built this one for Jeffrey, a boy who had come in about two weeks before, but had moved away suddenly. We gave Roberto the choice of buying this clubhouse or building his own. He decided this one was fine. It was just like everybody else’s anyway. It was a rectangular box made of scrap wood that was big enough to stand up in, with about a foot and a half of head room for most people. If you stretched out both arms, you could touch either wall at its width, and its length was enough for two people to lay end-to-end. You had to duck your head to get through the door.

  “Very nice,” he said, and we exchanged smiles.

  Then we showed him the business district—the newspaper office, the church, the police station, and the bakery. We saved the bakery for last because it was the most successful business in Kidsboro.

  We turned the corner around the meeting hall and saw the sign for Sid’s Bakery. Sid, one of two African-Americans in Kidsboro, made muffins, donuts, cookies, and cakes—all himself. He used ingredients that he bought from Mr. Whittaker. We could all buy smaller items from Mr. Whittaker with tokens, and he would buy ingredients or parts from the store with real money. Obviously, this meant Mr. Whittaker would be spending his own money and getting nothing in return since he couldn’t use the tokens anywhere but Kidsboro, but this was one of the sacrifices he made in order to keep Kidsboro going.

  Sid’s business had thrived. He had one advantage in that kids are never too picky about freshness, so he could frequently sell a three-day-old donut. The bakery was not much bigger than a regular clubhouse, but Sid always had a table full of pastries inside. I hadn’t been there in a while, and I thought I would buy a cinnamon-raisin donut for Roberto as a “Welcome to Kidsboro” gesture. But when we got there, Sid was leaving.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “You’re too late. I just threw away my last donut,” Sid said. Roberto was visibly disappointed.

  “You’re closing already?”

  “Yep. Forever.” Sure enough, there on the outside of the door was a sign that read “Going Out of Business Sale.” Sid closed the door behind him. “We had muffins for a token apiece,” he said. “You should’ve been here.”

  Sid’s muffins were usually four tokens each—and everyone in Kidsboro would agree that they were worth it. Most people in town had some vague idea about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Sid didn’t just have an idea. He had a destiny. At age 13, he was a fine chef in the making. He was already better than my mom—not that my mom was a bad cook. He was just a master—a pastry artist. Closing his bakery was like Michelangelo deciding to go into real estate.

  “Why are you shutting down?” I asked.

  “It’s not worth it. Hardly anybody buys anything anymore.”

  “We were just coming to buy something,” Scott said.

  “Great. But where have you been? You know how much stuff I sold last week? Two donuts, three cookies, and a bear claw. I can’t survive on that.”

  “So what are you gonna do?” Scott asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t leave!” I shouted, sounding more desperate than I meant to. “Maybe it was just a slow week. People’ll be back.”

  “I can’t wait for that. I’m wasting too much good food.”

  “Okay, okay. You can go for a while. Then everybody will miss you, and you can come back.”

  “Maybe.” And with a look that seemed to say, “I’m going to France to find people who appreciate my talents,” he left.

  “I don’t understand,” Roberto said. “He had good donuts, but his business is over?”

  “I don’t understand it either, Roberto,” I said. I looked at Scott. “I’m gonna miss the bear claws. Did you ever try those? They were incredible.”

  “Nope. Never tried one. I never bought anything from the bakery.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  I didn’t want Roberto to get the impression that life was tough for citizens of Kidsboro. He had just met someone whose business had tanked, and another person who was broke.

  But It was true. Scott had never earned a single token with his detective agency in the two months of Kidsboro’s existence. Of course, there hadn’t been much need for a private investigator.

  Like every other citizen of Kidsboro, Scott had been given enough tokens to start off with. He had probably already used that up-front money and never made any more.

  I wondered if this was true of more people in Kidsboro. Citizens were responsible for making their own living in whatever ways they wanted. As mayor, I was paid by the city. This meant that every month the residents paid 10 percent of their income for taxes. This money went to pay me, Alice, and Corey, the garbage man. Tax money also went to build special buildings, like the meeting hall. So far, I had not had to worry about making a living.

  Alice, in addition to being the police chief, was also in charge of collecting taxes. She was an obvious choice because no one would dare try to cheat her for fear of their very lives. Alice took care of all of this herself, so I didn’t know how much anyone made at all. Were there a lot of people out there not making any money? Was that the reason Sid was going out of business?

  We dropped Roberto off at his club house and left him there to consider what his place would be in Kidsboro.

  The next night there was a buzz in the air about some kind of meeting or rally that was taking place at the meeting hall. I figured I should check it out. When I got there, the place was packed.

  Valerie stepped to the front and stood behind a music stand. Oh, no. It was Valerie’s rally. I bit my lip to keep it from quivering as she began to speak.

  “Here I have the city charter,” she said, holding up a 10-page booklet. “Let me read some of the rules we have in this town. ‘No one is allowed to be in the city after eleven o’clock on weekends and nine o’clock on school nights.’” She flipped a page. “Here’s another. ‘There will be no fires or fireworks inside the city limits.’” She flipped through some more. Her eyes widened as if she saw a really offensive one. “And it goes on like this for 10 pages.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Is it my imagination, or has our city council suddenly become our parents?”

  Heads began nodding in approval. She continued. “These people think they can tell us how to live our lives. They don’t think we have enough rules. But don’t we? I mean, we have rules in school, we have rules at home, we have rules at church and on the street and in the grocery store. We’re kids! Shouldn’t there be a place we can go where we are free to do what we want to do?”

  More and more heads were nodding. The meeting hall began to buzz with protesting murmurs. Valerie raised her fist with confidence, shouting, “We don’t need the city council and the mayor to be our babysitters!”

  An unidentified voice shouted, “Yeah!” and others followed with the same exclamation. Most of the crowd were sitting hig
h up in their seats, ready for a revolt. Four people were notably not sitting up in their seats. Me, of course, and three other members of the city council. Alice was standing in the front corner with her hand on her hip (where a real police officer would have a gun), poised to extinguish a riot if she needed to.

  Valerie was about to continue when someone ran up. “Hey, come on! There’s been a break-in at Marcy’s house! The new kid did it!” Everyone rushed past me to see what all the excitement was about. I was the last one out.

  When I arrived at Marcy’s, the scene was clear. She was standing in the middle of her house, looking at all of her stuff. It looked as if someone had clobbered the room with a baseball bat. No one kept anything expensive in their houses, but she had a chair, some pictures, a few books, and a clock that were destroyed. Her walls were cracked in several places as well.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  Her mouth was open in disbelief. “Yeah. Why would anybody do this?”

  “I don’t know,” was all I could say.

  Roberto was there too. Alice grabbed him and started searching him, just in case he was actually carrying a weapon. She stood him straight up facing the outside wall of the club house, bending his arm across his lower back, and read him his rights (which she’d memorized for just such an occasion as this).

  I went up to her. “What happened?”

  “Marcy came home, and the door was wide open. The whole place was trashed. When I got here, this little punk was still standing here like the cat that ate the canary,” Alice said, bending his arm farther toward his head. Roberto winced.

  “You saw Roberto trashing your place?” I asked Marcy.

  “No. But he was here. Standing right outside the door.”

  “Roberto, were you in Marcy’s house?”